Only we can make it right on gun rights

I know guns. I was raised with them. I have always supported the right to have guns. As a lifelong hunter and gun owner, I have something to say to Wayne LaPierre, the CEO and executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. I choose to say this publicly because my past silence has allowed the NRA to corrupt the legitimate protection of my Second Amendment rights.

You see, my silence has enabled LaPierre's NRA to play a nasty political game with the basic right of gun ownership. The result we see today is an NRA maniacally expanding the definition of this right to include the ready, unregulated access to semi-automatic guns designed solely for killing large numbers of people. It is these weapons of war that are now commonly used for the mass killing of our schoolchildren, Christmas shoppers and first responders.

LaPierre is dead wrong, and he does not speak for me. The solution to the mass shooting of our kids is not to bring more weapons of massacre into our schools. The answer is not to turn our grade schools into domestic war zones. The answer is not to arm theatergoers with semi-automatic weapons. Such a delusional and embarrassingly self-serving answer would result in double and triple the number of innocent people killed and maimed -- and the number of shooters responsible. Can you imagine the unintended slaughter in that Aurora, Colo., theater if many of the patrons had been armed with semi-automatic weapons, as LaPierre suggests?

No, the answer is to keep the guns and the deranged individuals who use them apart and out of theaters and out of our schools. A fundamental and necessary part of the solution is to outlaw and prohibit the sale of these weapons designed to kill people, such as the AR-15, similar guns and the high-capacity ammunition clips that allow anyone so inclined to kill and maim dozens of innocent people in just seconds. We must remove these guns from our idea of what is fun and what is right.

There are thousands of you like me out there. Our silence has resulted in us ceding to LaPierre the role of protecting our own children from these mass murderers. We must now take back that role -- the right -- of protecting our kids in school. We, not the NRA, must protect our children. LaPierre's solution has been to demand the proliferation and drive-up-window ease of access to millions of AR-15s and their equivalents in this country. This reckless experiment to explode open the barn door so everyone, every time, everywhere can own a dozen semi-automatic military-style guns and 30-round clips has failed.

We failed by allowing it. Responsible gun ownership will always be part of American life. Let's take back the right we gave away to protect our kids -- now.